by Tim Wigmore
In 2012, Janmohamed was elected as chairperson of Cricket Kenya, becoming the first woman to head a country’s cricket board. A lawyer by trade, she was inculcated with a love of the game by her father and has, in the past, donated money to Kenyan cricket. Her position is honorary and unpaid, reflecting the paucity of funding in Kenya, but her ambitions have not been tentative. ‘It’s time that we all recognised the fact that to build cricket in Kenya it’s not about a particular association. It’s every Kenyan’s duty and responsibility, because when the team goes out there it plays as Kenya. Blame games don’t help,’ she said.
Janmohamed’s aim is nothing less than to inculcate a culture of cricket in state school. As of 2014, some public schools in England – like Cranleigh, which the Kenyan players Duncan Allan and Seren Waters attended – had more cricket nets than all the state schools in Kenya combined. Cricket Kenya has made tentative steps in developing grassroots cricket. The new Kenyan state constitution, which came into being in 2010, could help. By decentralising power in the country, it provides hope that Cricket Kenya may be able to work with newly empowered counties to spread the game.
The country is now divided into 47 counties and there are pilot projects to spread the game in five. This may not sound like a lot, but it amounts to a significant improvement. ‘Kids will play any game you give them – you give them a ball and a bat and they’ll play,’ Janmohamed told me. ‘You should see the happiness and the war dances after taking a wicket. It’s not a lost cause – it’s just if people expect results overnight, that is an impossibility.’
‘Cricket is not ingrained here,’ Waters noted. ‘It has never really been introduced into the schools.’ Cricket has fundamentally failed to take hold among the black Kenyan population; the black cricket journalist Clay Muganda told me there is a running joke that only Indians and him like cricket. Kenyan-Asian-run private members’ clubs in Nairobi do not formally exclude black Kenyans, as they historically did, but there are economic and cultural reasons why black Kenyans seldom play. Waters remains optimistic. ‘What is amazing is the natural hand-eye coordination of so many Kenyans. Given the right schools and youth development programmes, there is no reason that Kenya won’t be able to compete again at the highest level.’
It had long been a source of complaint that, even after the Africanisation of the Kenyan side, the game continued to be run by Kenyan-Asians. It is a criticism that no longer holds. Tikolo is now Kenya’s coach and leading black players including Martin Suji and Thomas Odoyo are involved in coaching. Tikolo is as defiant as one would expect a man who has given his life to Kenyan cricket to be. ‘There is a lot of goodwill from the government and the public. It is just a matter of giving them some time and seeing how they go. Cricket has become a tainted game because of the corruption of the previous regime.’
Still, no one is too optimistic about where cricket goes next. There is the unmistakable sense that the ICC has given up on Kenya for good, considering nurturing the game there more trouble than it is worth. ‘They need to get more cricketers and they need more support from the corporate world in Kenya and the government,’ an ICC source reflected. ‘With the current state of that country, it might be a bit difficult at this point.’
Sharing a border with Somalia makes Kenya acutely vulnerable to Islamic terrorism. The security situation adds another further complication. Home games have repeatedly had to be moved, postponed or cancelled, and no international team has played in Kenya since 2012. Cricket Kenya’s attempts to host events like the World Cricket League, the Under-19 World Cup qualifiers and even the ICC Conference have all been scuppered by security concerns.
This makes it impossible for cricket to get the exposure it needs to inspire the uptake of the sport. Understandably, the government cannot justify investment in a niche sport like cricket with almost half the population living on under a dollar a day. To both Karim and Odumbe, Kenyan cricket today is ‘dead and buried’. Karim even predicted that Kenya could lose their associate status. ‘It is beyond sad and painful. I am sure you can feel it in my voice, even now.’
Shorn of ODI status until 2018, at least, a sense of despair pervades Kenyan cricket. ‘When you lose your status teams look at you differently, because your value has gone down,’ said Suji, who played in three World Cups and is now a coach. Kenya are no longer allowed to play any ODIs, making matches harder to market and sponsors harder to attract. ‘The only time a sponsor wants to come in is when we’re going for a World Cup or something,’ Janmohamed reflected. ‘Who would want to play a game that doesn’t have ODI status because it no longer goes into the record books?’ She believed that having ODI status ‘would help us get sponsorship’, even if Kenya’s ranking was the same. It is an indictment of the ICC’s arbitrary decision to limit ODI status to 16 teams.
The reduction in the World Cup to ten teams from 2019 is the cause of further vexation. ‘The ICC are talking about reducing the teams on one hand and about globalising the game on the other,’ Tikolo reflected. ‘It inspires youngsters to play the game if they know that if they do well they would be playing in the World Cup.’
Children today are not only turning to football in cricket’s place. Since Kenya qualified for their first World Cup in 2001, rugby sevens has become increasingly popular. Cricket is going the other way. ‘Once they reduce the teams I am not sure whether the associate countries will be looked after,’ Tikolo feared. ‘At some point you will be forgotten.’
That means underdog stories like Obuya’s 5-24 against Sri Lanka will be impossible. ‘We are in 2014, we cannot be speaking of spreading the game and at the same time decide to reduce the number of teams playing the World Cup,’ Obuya said. ‘The more teams play, the more we get people talking and interested in learning more about our game.’
Cricket Kenya cannot even afford to keep its best players. While Nairobi clubs are dominated by middle-class players, especially those of Asian origin, the national side has a very different character because cricket has nothing to recommend itself as a career for middle-class Kenyans.
Seren Waters, the son of David, was once a beacon of hope in Kenyan cricket. At the age of 18 he made 74 in an ODI against South Africa. Yet before he turned 22 he effectively abandoned his international career; he now works as a teacher in London.
A contracted cricketer in Kenya today earns around 50,000 Kenyan shillings a month – around $560. It does not make cricket a remotely attractive option for the middle-class.
Tanmay Mishra, an attractive strokemaker who scored 72 against Australia in the 2011 World Cup, is another example. At the age of 26 he moved to India to build his cricketing career. ‘My main reason was that there were basically no fixtures and club cricket is not good,’ he reflected. ‘You want to be playing competitive cricket and you want to keep yourself busy. It just never worked out. After the 2011 World Cup it just became really difficult – the only thing you’re looking forward to is the Intercontinental Cup every five or six months.’
The tales of Mishra and Waters stand as a warning to Kenya and the rest of the associate world. Without a regular fixture list that can generate sustainable revenue for Cricket Kenya, the organisation will not be able to make cricket a viable career option and will be doomed to fielding under-strength sides. Kenya have tried to arrange more games but no side is compelled to play them. In December 2013, Zimbabwe cancelled a planned series at ten days’ notice. So Kenya remains locked in a vicious cycle that many low-ranking associates could relate to.
To grow the game, investment in development is fundamental. But this has to be paid for by reducing players’ wages. Without the prospect of decent salaries, the best cricketers will not commit to playing the game professionally – and the national side will not be able to achieve the results necessary to get the prize money and sponsorship necessary to drive cricket forward.
Perhaps the remarkable thing is not the collapse of Kenyan cricket but how players were once able to overcome the failings of the ICC and loca
l administrators to reach the World Cup semi-finals. That will remain cricket’s apex in Kenya. Barring a radical transformation of the game both in Kenya and in the boardrooms of the ICC, Kenya will never qualify for a World Cup again. For all its splendour, the Gymkhana Club Ground is deserted today. The media centre is still stubbornly standing, a relic of unfulfilled promise.
Local Dreams
PNG by Gideon Haigh
THIS book would not have been complete without a detailed analysis of Papua New Guinea. Gideon Haigh published the definitive take on the topic in June 2013 in The Nightwatchman, and he very kindly allowed us to reproduce the piece in full here.
The PNG story remains largely as it was when Gideon penned this piece, although there is perhaps now even more grounds for optimism. In January 2014 PNG came fourth in the World Cup qualifiers, giving them access to extra funding from the ICC and making them one of 16 teams in the world with ODI status. On 8 November PNG played Hong Kong in Townsville, Australia (no ground in PNG is ICC-approved to host ODIs). In the process, they became the 23rd international side in history to play an official ODI. The story of PNG cricket may still have a long way to run.
Greg Campbell’s office at Cricket Haus in sweltering Boroko, Port Moresby is kept habitable by three whirling ceiling fans – turning on the air conditioning unit behind him shorts the electricity. The landlines have not worked for 12 months, to the apathetic bemusement of a PNG Telikom technician who has just arrived after the payment of a bribe, and left without changing anything.
Petitioners are coming and going. The utes need filling up. The ground staff need lunch. For each, Campbell fishes colourful kina from a sturdy petty cash tin. He is careful, he explains, because things have a tendency to go missing round here. Over the last two years, he estimates having bought about 120 coffee cups. He reckons he is now down to about eight.
But if it’s difficult to credit, we’re actually in the headquarters of one of global cricket’s most remarkable success stories. At the turn of the century, despite a heritage of more than 100 years, cricket in Papua New Guinea was in disarray, short of money, of facilities, of purpose – the same might have been said of the country, which had turned over five prime ministers in five years and was routinely numbered among the world’s most unliveable places.
Today PNG is ranked 19th in the cricket world, having joined World Cricket League Division Two just over two years ago. It will play off in October’s World Twenty20 qualifier in the UAE and next year’s World Cup qualifier in New Zealand; later this year it will also participate in South Australia’s new Premier League, alongside four teams from Adelaide and a fifth from the Northern Territory.
In the last five years alone, PNG has gone from a cricket backwater into a poster country of the International Cricket Council’s development programme. ‘With an ever-expanding junior base, a crop of very talented national team players and a strong off-field administration, PNG is what development is all about,’ says ICC’s global development manager, Tim Anderson. ‘Turning cricket from a game played by a traditional few countries into a genuinely global, mass-participation sport.’
To savour some of the passion for the game you need to hit the road, which in Moresby is a memorable experience in itself, there being no speed limits, no obvious road rules, and no apparent fear among pedestrians. For a few months after arriving, Campbell took the red stains on roadsides for blood stains. They were actually expectorated splashes of the ubiquitous betel nut, but you can understand the misapprehension as you weave through the chaotic traffic. Pavements are crowded with street stalls, corners with people waiting patiently for buses that aren’t exactly regular.
In free use, applied to everything from mowing grass to shaving, are long-bladed machetes – ‘the PNG pocket knife’, as they are colloquially known. Fences are tall, sturdy, and topped with generous coils of barbed wire to discourage marauding raskol gangs – after a while, in fact, the coils comes to seem like a form of vegetation, growing as universally and inconspicuously as lantana in Australia. The housing types are deliriously varied, from fibro shacks that it looks like it would take one shove to demolish to the husks of modernist houses previously occupied by the colonial administrators who began moving out after PNG’s independence in September 1975.
About 20 minutes north-west of Port Moresby, a turn off the main road reveals a village’s picturesque panorama. Historically, Hanuabada is where Captain James Erskine of the HMS Nelson hoisted the union flag in November 1884 to declare Papua, the south-eastern portion of the island of New Guinea, a protectorate of the Queen of England. Nowadays it is a fishing community with a population of 20,000, and a cricket community with a history of having provided over the years almost three-quarters of those who have represented Papua New Guinea – a kind of junior Barbados or south seas Pudsey.
While larger, older dwellings line the narrow foreshore, most residents occupy simple but sturdy homes on piers out over the water. A closer look reveals a sorrier scape – a shoreline thickly carpeted with plastic debris. But walk the long jetties and, strange as it may sound, you’re in cricket country. My guide was PNG Under-19s coach John Ovia, a native son man and boy, who lives with his wife, mother and three young children about three quarters of the way along a jetty called Border, because it separates Hanuabada from nearby Eleva. They all play cricket and, after a while, it seems that everyone does.
We stop to pay our respects to a cricket personage at every second house, from a Moresby quick of the 1970s, Morea Gau, to the mother of PNG’s promising young opening bowler, Ray Haorda. ‘And this man,’ says Ovia proudly as he introduces a slight, white-haired, shyly-smiling figure, ‘he was the master of the single. By the time you looked up, he was at the other end.’ I ask Pala Ura, PNG’s wicketkeeper in the 1982 ICC Trophy, the secret to good running. ‘You must always run the first one hard,’ Ura replies solemnly. I tell him a few Australians would benefit from the advice.
One thing, Ura adds: PNG finished that tournament in third place, with only the winner, Zimbabwe, going through to an eight-team World Cup, sans exiled South Africa, the following year. I do a quick mental calculation: this means, in effect, that 30 years ago, PNG was the tenth-strongest team competing in international cricket. And most of the players were from this village. Smiles all round. Quite something, eh?
That it is, agrees Bill Leane, Campbell’s predecessor at Cricket PNG, when I meet him in his home town of Melbourne – and that’s good and bad. ‘No coaches, no sports science, no fitness programmes, just raw passion, and they were tenth on the world,’ he says. ‘It’s amazing, but where did that go in between times?’ So this is not so much a development story, as a redevelopment story, and also a speculation – for where does PNG go from here?
Captain Erskine’s proclamation 129 years ago completed a three-way carving of the island of New Guinea, the west forming a province of the Dutch East Indies, the east dividing British Papua to the south from German New Guinea in the north. Cricket reached Papua as part of the cultural baggage of missionaries, and among several fathers of the game one stands out: Rev Charles Abel of the London Missionary Society, and also of the Hertfordshire County Cricket Club, who arrived in Moresby in October 1890, aged 28. He soon found the game useful when shortly after arriving he was temporarily marooned in the village of Orokolo, 270km north-west of Moresby, surrounded by restless natives.
‘There was no time to lose [wrote his son]. With his usual resourcefulness he gathered the village children together and at once began to teach them cricket…The play relieved the tension considerably and soon the older people began to gather round, intrigued by the strange new game. Finally whatever the sentiments of their elders might have been, the children made friends with the white stranger. Hostility gave way to curiosity, the truculent attitude disappeared, and the danger passed.’
In August 1891, Abel was posted to the LMS’s easternmost head station on Kwato Island in the China Strait, a waterway growingly busy with traffic
from Australia to goldfields ports to the north. This 28-hectare speck was another dicey posting. Abel’s predecessor had succumbed to malaria; nearby natives had recently murdered a sea captain and only been subdued by some exemplary hangings. Encouraged by his Orokolo experience, Abel threw himself into bringing cricket to Kwato. No sooner had the church, mission station and student dormitories been erected than he enlisted his Papuan acolytes in transforming a malarial swamp into a cricket ground.
Abel’s only published work, a book for Christian youth called Savage Life in New Guinea (1902), contains something to offend every modern sensibility. The Papuan, in his experience, occupied ‘a very low position in the scale of savage peoples’, being slow, lazy, dirty and base, ‘guided in his conduct by nothing but his instinct and propensities, and governed by unchecked passions’; there were times, wrote Abel tremulously, when ‘unbridled passion seizes and masters him, the man becomes a fiend; and then there are no limits to his barbarity’.
Yet Abel wrote as much out of fear for Papuans as contempt for them. Purportedly the only LMS member to read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Abel foresaw disaster where Papuans were exposed to the full onslaught of occidental ways. Only ‘hard work and healthful sport’, he thought, as he looked down at last on the cricket ground it took four years to complete, could fortify them.
‘Their own amusements are often vicious. You cannot take away the pastimes of a race and give them nothing in their place…The spirit of prophecy was fulfilled when we transformed our spears into wickets and our shields into cricket bats…Most people will be able to appreciate our satisfaction as we sit in the shade of the citron trees sometimes after the day’s work is done and watch the boys at cricket, with their wickets pitched on the very spot where a short time ago the stagnant water and oozing mud exuded vapours which poisoned the air.’